


Coals of Fire

by executrix



Category: Blakes7
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-28
Updated: 2017-01-28
Packaged: 2018-09-20 11:55:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9489968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: Blake makes a new friend during a mission. The new friend has the misfortune to run into Avon.





	

1\. _If you see me with another guy,  
Looking like I'm having fun,  
Although he might be cute he's just a substitute,  
'Cause you're the only one_.

"Blake," Blake told Jenna via bracelet. "Sorry, I'll be back a bit late. No, everything's all right. More than all right." He wondered briefly if there was any portable object of value that he should ask Jenna to remove from his cabin before it got thrown in his direction on his return. 

"Absolutely not," Blake told the person rather closer at hand, burying his head on a lightly furred, tautly muscled chest for a few more licks and kisses as the large, capable hands stroked his back. "First of all, I'd be heartsick if anything happened to you. Secondly, Avalon needs you here."

"I'm in the sodding Quartermaster Corps," Jarrom said. "What kind of contribution to the rebellion is that? Nearest I've come to seeing action is cutting my hand on a catering-size tin of tomatoes. And if you take me with you, then not only could we be together, I could do something real."

No rest for the wicked, Blake thought. Come on over here for these idiotic meetings, complete waste of time. Then I meet him, and all of a sudden it's about as good a use of my time as I can imagine. Bloke who looks like he walked out of a Pirelli calendar--well, a bent Pirelli calendar, if there was such a thing, worships the ground I teleport onto, ahh, only a cad would kiss and tell, but....

And then he sends me crashing right back down to earth. Why does every-bloody-body I so much as get a leg over want--*demand*!--something that I can't give him? Was there another one of Newton's laws that they forgot to tell us about? That for every jump there's an equal and opposite ear-bashing?

"An army marches on its stomach," Blake said gently. "Look, I'll be back. You know that I can take care of myself. No worries. And I'm counting on you being here, safe and sound."

2\. (Two weeks earlier)  
 _Sometimes a man's caught lookin'  
At things that he don't need..._

"I'm appalled," Avon said.

Blake looked up, with a start, from what he was examining. Which was, not to put too hard a point on it, a stroke book.

"Uh--well, I don't see why--it's harmless--just a fantasy--you always said we--I took you at your word--"

Avon kissed the top of Blake's head and leaned over the desk, his right hand supporting him and his left hand covering the rather implausible central figure of the photograph. "That lamp! Those drapes! There's a ceramic unicorn on that etagere!"

"Well, you don't look at the mantelpiece--literally this time--when you're poking the fire."

"Just carry on with what you were doing," Avon said. "Don't mind me." But he sounded excited, not annoyed. Blake continued to peruse the pages, embarrassed but additionally aroused by the unexpected audience. Just when he thought it was time to think about opening his trousers, the need was anticipated. 

"As you were," Avon said. He got up and retrieved a tube of lubricant cream from the nightstand. He handed it to Blake. As Blake deployed it, Avon pushed the magazine to the back of the desk. 

"Why don't you stand up?" he suggested. "Or rather, bend forward. And keep on. With a minor addition to the programme." Mate in two, Avon thought. It's almost too easy.

In the spirit of cooperation, Blake flipped through the document until he found a more complex composition, where all that's best of dark and bright met in their aspect and their eyes.

A little later, Blake said, "You weren't really upset, were you?"

"Of course not. We've had this discussion before. I like it when you're really randy. I'd hate to be taken like a vitamin supplement."

"And if--just if--this is a theoretical discussion and not a confession--it were a real person and not a photograph?"

"We're both men, and at least one of us is queer," Avon said. "It's irrational to get upset about an amusement. You like me or you don't and you fancy me or you don't, and as long as there are other people in the Universe you may find someone you like or you fancy. Don't bring home anything we're not inoculated against, and if you're staying out all night, just leave a message so I can distinguish a pressing need for rescue from a night on the tiles."

3\. _Caught in a trap,  
You know I can't get out,  
Because I love you too much baby _

Even though it was a nowhere-much frontier post, the guards were well trained. SonoVapor was expensive. Rifle butts, albeit fairly expensive, were also sturdy, reusable, and multi-purpose. 

So, when the guard saw Jarrom surreptitiously testing the back door of the computer center, she reversed her grasp on the rifle and clubbed him over the head. It worked admirably. She triggered her communicator and got another guard to hold Jarrom's other arm, when he struggled back to consciousness, and haul him into the post commander's office.

"Take him out and knock him down until he stops getting up," the commander said. "Then drag him back in here." He looked at Jarrom. "Try to make a bit of a showing, will you? I've got a lot of paperwork in my office to catch up on."

4\. If You're Ever Down a Well, Ring My Bell

They tossed him down a couple of stairs into a cellar, or really a cell: the door certainly locked resoundingly. Then they went away, and he was grateful that his hands were free, but depressed (among other reasons) that they hadn't even thought he was worth a pair of handcuffs. 

In his pocket was the very first prototype of a new device. He clasped it on one wrist, desperately tried to remember the instructions, discovered that it was fairly self-explanatory, and croaked out, "Help! I'm in trouble! If you can hear me, Liberator, get me out of here!"

At that particular moment, Servalan would be the personage (out of everyone ever, real or fictional, living or historical) that Jarrom would be second-least pleased to see. She was not operating the teleport. The person who outranked her on the list, was.

Mutual recognition was not difficult. Jarrom had already seen a couple of images of Avon. The Wanted poster was in Avalon's files. Jarrom had also seen a hologram snapped by Garona Movrimer, the unarmed combat instructor, during her brief detail to the Liberator. She was so smitten that she set it as wallpaper for her monitor. (Not that she was much of a photographer--if anything, the Wanted poster was a bit more flattering.) And there was a sort of Avon-shaped crevice, a very telling negative space that Blake had fitted him into.

Although Avon had never seen or heard of Jarrom, it took only a couple of deductions to place him. He wore one of the experimental single-use teleport bracelets Blake brought with him to Avalon's camp. 

Then, although the young man was not looking his best at the moment, when he cleaned up he would doubtless qualify for that exemplar of the graphic arts Blake had been perusing earlier: Hot College Jocks! The Hung, Ripped Guys That Put the STUD in Student!!

Hung. Ripped. Sounds like a plan.

"Christ, I was probably better off staying there," Jarrom said.

"You needn't worry about any sort of coercion," Avon said. "Believe me, you are as safe with me as if my only alternative to you were a Bercol and Rontane menage. Anyway, I'm a civilized man," which merely confirmed what Jarrom suspected: that he was for the jump.

"My name is..." he began.

"Do you honestly think I care?"

But after all, why not be civilized? It so often worked so much better than a flamethrower down the throat. 

And when it didn't, Avon knew where the key to the flamethrower locker was kept.

5\. _If I can't shake the heavens themselves,  
I'll raise Hell_

A couple of quick medi-scans confirmed what Avon surmised. Jarrom looked like he finished fourth out of three in a punch-up, but was not seriously harmed. He handed Jarrom a tissue regen unit. 

"Blake isn't here, I'm afraid," Avon said. "Something about a training exercise with your recruit class on the Western Plateau."

"Thank God, I couldn't face him," Jarrom said. 

"Oh? I should have thought that you were eager to see him, when you called for help."

"Really, I just called for anybody, I was in dead trouble, you see I was just having a bit of a look at the Federation post..."

"Let's see if I can guess. You went of your own initiative--or perhaps we should say AWOL--you hadn't a plan, or an idea in that pretty head, and you got caught and knocked about. No wonder you and Blake get along so well. But don't worry. You're not really injured, and when you go back those few contusions and lacerations will win you a bit of sympathy, I daresay you won't be in the glasshouse for long. Particularly after everyone gets tired of field rations."

At least he didn't mention the spacehopper I borrowed, Jarrom reflected. "But can't I stay here?" he asked plaintively. "You know, sign on here? I can't go back there, well, ahhh, actually, well, I, I told them the location of Avalon's base."

Reluctantly, Avon made himself stop laughing after a measured four seconds.

"I see," Avon said. "Well, then, my dear boy, we'll just have to move the base, won't we? Or rather, won't I?"

6\. _And like unto the base Indian  
Threw away a pearl   
Richer than all his tribe _

After putting a plate of sandwiches down on the tray that snapped across the middle of the whirlpool bath, Avon perched on the rim of the tub, his back to Jarrom, his arms crossed. After a moment, he got up and filled a cup from a dispenser in the Medications cabinet. "Purely medicinal. The fact that it's served out of a pump dispenser in a pleated paper cup rather than out of a decanter in a snifter says something about the stuff," Avon said. "Have some. It'll help you pull yourself together." 

After all, he thought, once when Henri IV of France dropped by his mistress' chateau unexpectedly, he ordered a huge meal and threw a roast partridge under the bed where her lover was hiding, and said, "Can't let the poor devil starve."

Jarrom slid back in the tub, enjoying the play of hot water on his sore muscles. In his professional opinion, the sandwiches were quite good, even though or perhaps because he didn't think the recipe would scale up for a base the size of Avalon's (for one thing, the chutney was probably homemade). Bad as the brandy was, it did make him feel better. Possibly rather too much so.

"You're a jackass," he said to Avon's back, which was all he could see--the mirror was steamed up. "God, I envy you so much, and you just don't care. You're with Blake every day, and you don't appreciate him properly. I bet you don't even tell him that you love him."

"'I love you,'" Avon said. "That's what we used to say behind the bicycle sheds, to get the knickers down."

"You're not kind to him, you're not thoughtful..."

"Ah, yes, the little things mean so much, don't they? Even though Blake knows that, for him, I've accepted that I will die--well, not young, but soon--and that I will suffer a terrible death that serves no purpose in a bad cause. 

You're quite right. The next time I'm downplanet I must pick up some flowers for him. Gerbera daisies are his favorite. Or some sweets. He likes liqueur chocolates, I'm afraid. And liquorice allsorts and boiled sweets. Really, his favorites are mint humbugs. I'm sure he'd take it in better part if they came from you rather than me."

Avon got him some clean clothes from the Wardrobe Room, showed him to an empty cabin, told him that he was welcome to wander around the ship and explain who he was and how he got there to the rest of the crew, and therefore went on his way certain that Jarrom would stay in place until fetched.

It's an interesting idea, Avon thought. The deflector shields generate a misleading image. But couldn't something be done to induce misinterpretation of the image, at the other end? Now there was only one DSV cruising the Universe; the weakness of the Federation fleet was that its military vessels were stamped out by cookie cutters, and once you knew the specs for a marque, it became vulnerable to such induced hallucinations.

Orac said that he'd been damn near finished with a much better implementation, would have been finished ages ago if he hadn't constantly been distracted by trivia, and together they worked it out fairly quickly.

"Problem solved," Avon said, handing Jarrom another one-time bracelet. "If you're quick about it, you can be back by Lights Out."

Jarrom dissolved through the teleport, recognizing that he had been metaphorically screwed and blued. He just hoped that the metaphorical tattoo was a nice design.

7\. Return to Sender

Blake opened his holdall, threw the used shirts and underwear down the laundry chute, brushed off his spare tunic, and hung it in the wardrobe. "I'm glad to be home," he said. "Any excitement?"

"Nothing much happened while you were away. Vila and I played a little chess. Oh, and I had a rather clever idea. Avalon's using it now, to disrupt detection of the facility. They sent a fighter-bomber that thinks that part of the Southern Continent--the bit where Avalon wanted to have a go at vipsanium mining--is her base, and consequently is blasting the fuck out of it."

"Marvelous!" Blake said. "Can't wait to ask Avalon how it works."

"Efficiently, I should imagine."

"Sweetheart," Blake said, from across the cabin, "You're not angry at me, are you? Not hurt? Because I--well, you know, before I went to the Western Plateau--"

And suddenly Avon was close enough to Blake nearly to coincide. He admitted to himself that he had been rather--piqued. But, as he told himself, as soon as he recognized the unworthiness of such emotions, he got over it. 

"Fill your hand, you sonofabitch," Avon said equably.


End file.
